The Next Draft: Bay State born of a love for hockey, German beer

By Matthew Tota, Correspondent

Thursday

Sep 12, 2019 at 12:01 AMSep 12, 2019 at 2:14 PM

WORCESTER — Try as he might, Chip Jarry could never drink all of the beer he brewed for himself at home. He never had too many kegs lying around, though, thanks to six rosters of thirsty men's league hockey players.

Jarry, who had been home brewing off and on for the better part of two decades, typically brought a keg of his brew every time he went to play in a Worcester Men's Senior League game at the Horgan Skating Arena in Auburn.

"There were always three games going on, so that's 60 guys in there and plenty of people to share a keg with," he said. "We'd rip through it."

During one game in 2009, Jarry met Shawn Rich, another player whose love of German beer rivaled his own. Over the next few years, they grew into close friends, then business partners, founding Bay State Brewing Co. in 2012.

Now, Jarry and Rich are poised to move Bay State into the Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center, making it the city's sixth brewery. Last week, they received approval from the city to take over the liquor license from the space's former tenant, Nonna's Pizza & Pasta.

Once the state approves the license, Bay State will begin moving into the arena's second floor bar overlooking the rink. Jarry and Rich hope to begin serving their beers as early as next month.

Hockey is as important to the fabric of Bay State as German beer. Jarry and Rich still play in that same men's league (they have since changed their team name to Bay State Brewery). And Rich takes his son to hockey games there.

“I practically live at this rink during the winter,” he said.

He had heard rumors that Nonna's Pizza & Pasta was looking for a change and inquired with both the restaurant's ownership, Niche Hospitality Group, and the arena's owner, Cliff Rucker.

"At first we thought we'd work with (Nonna’s), where they would do the food and we'd handle beer, but it evolved into us taking over the whole space," Rich said.

Rucker, who doesn't travel to many breweries, needed some convincing that Bay State would be the right fit for the Ice Center. "He didn't know that much about tasting rooms, but once he found out that we're family-friendly he embraced the idea; he's all in now," Rich said.

Aside from their shared connection to hockey, Jarry and Rich were drawn to the Ice Center's location in an increasingly attractive Canal District, where soon Polar Park will open and the nightmare that is Kelley Square will come to an end.

"We looked at probably 10 towns and multiple locations in the city itself, and this just seemed to be the best possible location for us," Jarry said.

They aren't worried about the availability of parking, as they feel they have enough spaces at and around the arena.

Later this month, Jarry and Rich will begin gutting Nonna’s dining room space on the first floor to build out Bay State’s taproom and install its 10-barrel brew house.

The tasting room will bear a simple, industrial design, Rich said, with communal tables and a garage door that opens up into the arena’s foyer. The bar will have 12 tap lines, and on warmer days, a beer garden will open outside. The kitchen is to remain largely intact, serving a basic menu, including burgers and salads.

The second-floor bar could open to the public as early as Oct. 15, Rich said, but the brewery and taproom will not be completed until January.

Bay State’s brew house will have a small canning line and produce around 15 barrels a week to start, Jarry said. Jarry has a pilot system in Leicester where he brews test batches, but all of the beer Bay State releases into distribution — including its popular IPA “Becky Likes the Smell — is produced on contract by Brewmaster Brewing Services in Williamsburg.

Having his own brew house will allow Jarry to stretch his brewing legs and create more lagers and other traditional German styles that may not be as coveted in today’s craft beer market. Since everything he brews will be consumed only at the taproom, he also has the freedom to experiment with smaller batches.

“What this does is take all the restraints off me as a brewer. Currently, we do everything on a production scale for retail and on-premise sales,” he said. “Now this gives me a palette to play with beers I really want to play with. I can really come up with beers that I would love to do one-offs or two-offs of.”

Brewing runs in Jarry’s family, as his grandfather brewed beer at his home in Kansas. Jarry remembers venturing into his grandfather’s basement brew house and smelling the aromas emanating from the crocks.

“He was a bootlegger,” Jarry said of his grandfather. “He had seven kids, and he had to do anything to make money; he brewed the old, old way, and I imagine the beer was disgusting, from what my uncles tell me.”

Jarry ran a homebrew shop for a decade before forming Bay State with Rich, who was a sales representative for the German brewery Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu at the time.

Jarry and Rich are expecting to fit nicely into the city’s already thriving craft beer scene and look forward to sharing beers with the other brewers during Worcester Craft Beer Week, which runs from Sept. 21 to Sept. 28.

"What's really cool for Worcester is, at some point, you will come up with a Worcester style of beer," Jarry said. "With the breweries already in the city and now with us, we all hope to produce beer that you can only find in Worcester and that makes the city a destination."

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